History of ACC Research at TGen

Prior developing Kirsten's Legacy, early funding for TGen's ACC program came from ACC survivor Troy Richards, who was instrumental in establishing TGen's ACC program. Richards has actively raised dollars for ACC research through the Advancing Treatment for Adrenal Cancer (ATAC) fund. This program helped bring ACC research out of the dark ages and into the 21st century.

In May 2005, Richards met with TGen faculty to discuss establishing an ACC research program. Richards also developed a website and co-founded what is now the largest ACC support group on the Web. He often receives calls from patients throughout the world, whom he encourages to participate in clinical trials.

Kirsten's Legacy and the ATAC Fund Join Forces

In late 2010, Gary and Barbara Pasquinelli of Yuma, Arizona, along with Kirsten's husband, Ed Sandstrom, began working with TGen to establish Kirsten's Legacy in memory of Kirsten Sandstrom, loving daughter, wife and mother of three, who had lost her battle with ACC in March of that year.

The mission of Kirsten’s Legacy is to provide valuable resources to patients and their families while working to cure ACC through identification of new therapies and advancing those discoveries, as quickly as possible, to clinical trials.

While ACC is one of most rare and lethal of endocrine cancers, it remains one of the least well funded. Please support our efforts to find new therapies as well as new means of preventing and curing this devastating form of cancer.